Jai Shri Krishna!

Jai Shri Krishna!

“A non-attached mind, according to Krishna, is one who accepts everything unconditionally. The interesting thing is that if you accept something totally it does not leave a mark, a scar on your mind; your mind remains unscathed and undisturbed. But when you cling strongly to a thing it leaves a mark on your mind. And when you are strongly averse to something you detest and deny it, then also it leaves a mark on your mind.

But when you neither cling to a thing nor run away from it, when you become receptive to everything - good or bad, beautiful or ugly, pleasant or painful - when you become like a mirror reflecting everything that comes before it, then your mind remains unscathed and unmarked. And such a mind is a non-attached mind; it is established in non-attachment.

How can one attain to non-attachment?

Before we go into the question of non-attachment, let us understand the matter of attachment itself.

How is it that one ceases to be non-attached and becomes attached to persons, things and ideas?

According to Krishna, non-attachment is embedded in the very nature of a human being, in his very being. Non-attachment is our basic nature, our original face. So the real question is how one deviates from his nature. We don't have to practice non attachment, we don't have to do something to come to it. We have only to know how we have gone astray from our nature. This is our basic question.

Someone came to me the other day and said, "I want to find God." I asked him when and how he had lost his God. His answer was that he had never lost him.

Then I asked him, "How can you search for a thing that you have not lost? Search implies that you lost something and now you are trying to recover it. Therefore," I said to him, "it is not a question of finding God. You would have to find God if you had really lost him. So first you have to know if you have lost him. And if you come to know on your own that you never lost him, the search is complete."

Non-attachment is our self-nature, we are born with it. So it is strange that in life, we all become victims of attachment and aversion. Non-attachment is our very nature. If attachment is our nature, we cannot manage to be averse to anything. If aversion was our nature, we could not fall prey to attachment. For example, a branch of a tree sways westward with the westerly wind and eastward with the easterly wind. How is it that the branch sways with the winds? Because it is neither in the east nor in the west; it is just in the middle.

Let us take another example: when we boil water it becomes hot, and when we cool it it becomes cold, because water in itself is neither hot nor cold. If water was intrinsically hot it could never become cold; it could never be heated if it was basically cold. Water's own nature transcends both hot and cold, so we can easily heat or cool it as we like.

If attachment is our self-nature, there is no way to be repelled by anything. But we are easily repelled.

If clinging was our self-nature we could not give up anything, but we do give things up. In the same way if renunciation was our self-nature. we could not cling to a thing, but we cling like leeches. It simply means that neither attachment nor aversion is intrinsic to our self-nature. Therefore we move in both directions - we now become attached and then averse to something. Because our innate nature transcends both these states of mind, we can move conveniently into them.

The behavior of a man of non-attachment will be radically different from others, and this behavior is called anasakti yoga or the discipline of non-attachment. He accepts everything - like a mirror - without attachment or dislike. Now he knows for himself what self-nature is, what non-attachment is.

He knows that self-nature and non-attachment are inseparably together, and he also knows that attachment and aversion are just behavioral. Having known and understood it in depth, he is not going to behave the same as he had behaved before. His behavior with the outside world will be radically different, because for him the world has ceased to be what it was before. His consciousness has undergone a mutation. It is no more like the film of a camera; now it is like a mirror, and he will use it as a mirror.

A mirror reflects everything that appears before it, but unlike the camera it does not retain impressions when the object has moved away from it. A man of such consciousness will relate with people and things, but he will not enter into relationships involving attachment and aversion. He will mix in society, but his aloneness will remain inviolate and untouched. He will love, but his love will be like lines drawn on the surface of water. Even if he goes to fight, he will fight as though in a play which leaves no marks on the player after he is finished with it. His mirror of consciousness will reflect both love and war, but in itself it will remain unaffected by either. Whatever he will do, his consciousness will be still and steady like the center of the cyclone. His behavior will be just an acting. He will no more remain a doer; he will be an actor on the stage of life.

If Krishna is anything, he is an actor - a superb actor at that. There has never been a greater and more skilled actor in the whole history of man-kind. He is incomparable even as an actor - he who turned the whole world into a stage. While all other actors perform their skill on petty stages, Krishna uses the whole earth for his stage.

If a wooden stage can be used why not the whole earth? It does not make much difference; the world can be turned into a leela, a theatrical performance - which it really is - and we all can play our roles as actors and performers. An actor weeps and laughs, but tears and laughter don't bind him; he remains untouched by them. When he loves he does not love, when he fights he does not fight; he is never involved in his roles as worldly people are. He plays a friend and a foe without being involved in friendship and enmity.

By turning inward one attains to non-attachment. And turning in is possible only if you become a witness - a watcher on the hill. Begin witnessing from any point of life and you will reach your innermost depth. And the moment you arrive at your center, you are non attached, you are like a lotus in water. The lotus is born in water, lives in water and yet remains untouched by it.”

-Osho